Tag Archives: FBI

U.S. says it may not need Apple to open San Bernardino iPhone

(Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors said Monday that a “third party” had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, a development that could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple Inc.

A federal judge in Riverside, California, late Monday agreed to the government’s request to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday so that the FBI could try the newly discovered technique. The Justice Department said it would update the court on April 5.

The government had insisted until Monday that it had no way to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California, except to force Apple to write new software that would disable the password protection.

The Justice Department last month obtained a court order directing Apple to create that software, but Apple has fought back, arguing that the order is an overreach by the government and would undermine computer security for everyone.

The announcement on Monday that an unnamed third party had presented a way of breaking into the phone on Sunday – just two days before the hearing and after weeks of heated back-and-forth in court filings – drew skepticism from many in the tech community who have insisted that there were other ways to get into the phone.

“From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the government’s case is the claim that Apple’s help is required to unlock the phone,” said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “Many in the technical community have been skeptical that this is true, especially given the government’s considerable resources.”

Former prosecutors and lawyers supporting Apple said the move suggested that the Justice Department feared it would lose the legal battle, or at minimum would be forced to admit that it had not tried every other way to get into the phone.

In a statement, the Justice Department said its only interest has always been gaining access to the information on the phone and that it had continued to explore alternatives even as litigation began. It offered no details on the new technique except that it came from a non-governmental third party, but said it was “cautiously optimistic” it would work.

“That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option,” a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Melanie R. Newman, said. “If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people.”

It would also likely end the case without a legal showdown that many had expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

An Apple executive told reporters on a press call that the company knew nothing about the Justice Department’s possible method for getting into the phone, and that the government never gave any indication that it was continuing to search for such solutions.

The executive characterized the Justice Department’s admission Monday that it never stopped pursuing ways to open the phone as a sharp contrast with its insistence in court filings that only Apple possessed the means to do so.

Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group backing Apple, said the San Bernardino case was the “hand-chosen test case” for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary.

In that context, he said, the last-minute discovery of a possible solution and the cancellation of the hearing is “suspicious,” and suggests the government might be worried about losing and setting a bad precedent.

But George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor, said the government was likely only postponing the fight.

“The problem is not going away, it’s just been delayed for a year or two,” he said.

Apple said that if the government was successful in getting into the phone, which might involve taking advantage of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, it hoped officials would share information on how they did so. But if the government drops the case it would be under no obligation to provide information to Apple.

In opposing the court order, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, and his allies have argued that it would be unprecedented to force a company to develop a new product to assist a government investigation, and that other law enforcement agencies around the world would rapidly demand similar services.

Law enforcement officials, led by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, have countered that access to phones and other devices is crucial for intelligence work and criminal investigations.

The government and the tech industry have clashed for years over similar issues, and Congress has been unable to pass legislation to address the impasse.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn, additional reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay)

FBI warns automakers, owners about vehicle hacking risks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI and U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a bulletin Thursday warning that motor vehicles are “increasingly vulnerable” to hacking.

“The FBI and NHTSA are warning the general public and manufacturers – of vehicles, vehicle components, and aftermarket devices – to maintain awareness of potential issues and cybersecurity threats related to connected vehicle technologies in modern vehicles,” the agencies said in the bulletin.

In July 2015, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recalled 1.4 million U.S. vehicles to install software after a magazine report raised concerns about hacking, the first action of its kind for the auto industry.

Also last year, General Motors Co issued a security update for a smartphone app that could have allowed a hacker to take control of some functions of a plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt, like starting the engine and unlocking the doors.

In January 2015, BMW AG said it had fixed a security flaw that could have allowed up to 2.2 million vehicles to have doors remotely opened by hackers.

“While not all hacking incidents may result in a risk to safety – such as an attacker taking control of a vehicle – it is important that consumers take appropriate steps to minimize risk,” the FBI bulletin said Thursday.

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind told reporters in July 2015 that automakers must move fast to address hacking issues.

The Fiat Chrysler recall came after Wired magazine reported hackers could remotely take control of some functions of a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, including steering, transmission and brakes. NHTSA has said there has never been a real-world example of a hacker taking control of a vehicle.

Two major U.S. auto trade associations — the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers — late last year opened an Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The groups share cyber-threat information and potential vulnerabilities in vehicles.

The FBI bulletin Thursday warned that criminals could exploit online vehicle software updates by sending fake “e-mail messages to vehicle owners who are looking to obtain legitimate software updates. Instead, the recipients could be tricked into clicking links to malicious Web sites or opening attachments containing malicious software.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

Apple fight could escalate with demand for ‘source code’

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The latest filing in the legal war between the planet’s most powerful government and its most valuable company gave one indication of how the high-stakes confrontation could escalate even further.

In what observers of the case called a carefully calibrated threat, the U.S. Justice Department last week suggested that it would be willing to demand that Apple turn over the “source code” that underlies its products as well as the so-called “signing key” that validates software as coming from Apple.

Together, those two things would give the government the power to develop its own spying software and trick any iPhone into installing it. Eventually, anyone using an Apple device would be unable to tell whether they were using the real thing or a version that had been altered by officials to be used as a spy tool.

Technology and security experts said that if the U.S. government was able to obtain Apple’s source code with a conventional court order, other governments would demand equal rights to do the same thing.

“We think that would be pretty terrible,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

The battle between Apple and the U.S Justice Department has been raging since the government in February obtained a court order demanding that Apple write new software to help law enforcement officials unlock an iPhone associated with one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people.

Apple is fighting the order, arguing that complying with the request would weaken the security of all iPhones and create an open-ended precedent for judges to make demands of private companies.

The Justice Department’s comments about source code and signing keys came in a footnote to a filing last week in which it rejected Apple’s arguments. Apple’s response to the DOJ brief is expected on Tuesday.

Justice Department lawyers said in the brief that they had refrained from pursuing the iOS source code and signing key because they thought “such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple.”

The footnote evoked what some lawyers familiar with the case call a “nuclear option,” seeking the power to demand and use the most prized assets of lucrative technology companies.

A person close to the government’s side told Reuters that the Justice Department does not intend to press the argument that it could seize the company’s code, and someone on Apple’s side said the company isn’t worried enough to counter the veiled threat in its brief due Tuesday.

But many people expect the iPhone matter to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, and thus even fallback legal strategies are drawing close scrutiny.

ODDS OF SUCCESS UNCLEAR

There is little clarity on whether a government demand for source code would succeed.

Perhaps the closest parallel was in a case filed by federal prosecutors against Lavabit LLC, a privacy-oriented email service used by Edward Snowden. In trying to recover Snowden’s unencrypted mail from the company, which did not keep Snowden’s cryptographic key, the Justice Department got a court order forcing the company to turn over another key instead, one that would allow officials to impersonate the company’s website and intercept all interactions with its users.

“Lavabit must provide any and all information necessary to decrypt the content, including, but not limited to public and private keys and algorithms,” the lower court ruled.

Lavabit shut down rather than comply. But company lawyer Jesse Binnall said the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower ruling, did so on procedural grounds, so that the Justice Department’s win would not influence much elsewhere.

In any case, full source code would be even more valuable than the traffic key in the Lavabit case, and the industry would go to extreme lengths to fight for it, Binnall said.

“That really is the keys to the kingdom,” Binnall said.

Source code is sometimes inspected during lawsuits over intellectual property, and the Justice Department noted that Apple won permission to review some of rival Samsung’s <005930.KS> code in one such case. In that case and similar battles, the code is produced with strict rules to prevent copying.

No cases brought by the government have led to that sort of code production, or at least none that have come to light.

But intelligence agencies operate under different rules and have wide latitude overseas. Some advanced espionage programs attributed to the United States used digital certificates that were stolen from Taiwanese companies, though not full programs.

U.S. software code may have been sought in other cases, such as investigations relying on the Patriot Act or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which applies within American borders.

Several people who have argued before the special FISA court or are familiar with some of its cases say they know of no time that the government has sought source code.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)

Police shot Oregon protester in back, but prosecutor says act was ‘justified’

(Reuters) – A slain leader of the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon was killed by three gunshots fired into his back by police, a county prosecutor said on Tuesday, calling the shooting “justified and necessary.”

Robert “LaVoy” Finicum was shot and killed by Oregon State Police on Jan. 26 after he ran from his pickup truck at a roadblock along a snow-covered roadside during the occupation by lands rights protesters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Relatives of Finicum, who was a spokesman for the group that seized buildings at the refuge, have previously said that he posed no threat to police during the confrontation and have rejected official assertions that he was armed at the time.

Speaking at a press conference in Bend, Oregon, Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson said a loaded 9mm handgun was found in the pocket of Finicum’s jacket following the shooting.

Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris said eight shots were fired at Finicum during the confrontation, six of them by Oregon State Police officers and two by FBI agents.

An autopsy found that three of the bullets fired by Oregon State Police officers struck Finicum in the base of the neck, shoulder and lower back and led to his death, Norris said.

“The six shots fired by the Oregon State Police were justified and in fact necessary,” Norris said.

During the press conference, officials played video and audio tapes of the confrontation, during which Finicum can be heard telling law enforcement officers: “Go ahead, put the bullet through me. I don’t care. I’m going to meet the sheriff. You do as you damn well please.”

At another point he is heard to say: “If you want a blood bath, it’s on your hands.”

The videotape had been released previously but was synched with audio from inside the pickup truck and played in slow motion at times to show what law enforcement officials said was Finicum reaching for his weapon immediately before he was shot.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement that its inspector general’s office was investigating the actions of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team in the Finicum shooting.

The takeover, which began on Jan. 2 with at least a dozen armed men, was sparked by the return to prison of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal property in the vicinity of the refuge.

It also marked the latest flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West.

The leaders of the standoff, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were arrested at the same traffic stop at which Finicum was slain.

The final four holdouts were taken into custody on Feb. 17, ending the 41-day standoff. At least 16 people have been charged with conspiracy to impede federal officers in connection with the occupation.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Eric Johnson and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Dan Grebler and Tom Brown)

Apple lawyer, FBI director face off in Congress on iPhone encryption

By Julia Harte and Julia Edwards

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple Inc <AAPL.O> to give the FBI data from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters would be “potentially precedential” in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies.

The remarks were a slight change to Comey’s statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was “unlikely to be a trailblazer” for setting a precedent for other cases.

Tuesday’s testimony from Comey and remarks before the same U.S. House Judiciary Committee by Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the dueling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts.

On Feb. 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting.

Sewell and Comey’s remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree. Comey said the tool created for Farook’s iPhone would not work on other models. But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone.

“This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today,” Sewell said.

Committee members seized on Comey’s statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device.

“Given… that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?” asked the panel’s ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers.

Comey responded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not asking to expand the government’s surveillance authority, but rather to maintain its ability to obtain electronic information under legal authorities that Congress has already provided.

He also acknowledged that it was a “mistake” for the FBI to have asked San Bernardino County officials to reset the phone’s cloud storage account after it was seized. The decision prevented the device, which was owned by the county, Farook’s employer, from backing up information that the FBI could have read.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last Dec. 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police. The government has said the attack was inspired by Islamist militants and the FBI wants to read the phone’s data to investigate any links with militant groups.

Comey told a congressional panel last Thursday that the phone could have “locator services” that would help the agency fill in a gap in its knowledge of the route the couple traveled as they fled.

“We’re missing 19 minutes before they were finally killed by law enforcement,” Comey said. “The answer to that might be on the device.”

A federal judge handed Apple a victory in another phone unlocking case in Brooklyn on Monday, ruling that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday at the RSA Cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that she was “disappointed” by the Brooklyn ruling, and rebuffed Apple’s claim that its Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was being violated.

The Justice Department is “not alleging that [Apple has] done anything wrong,” Lynch said, but is treating the company as a third party holding data valuable to an ongoing investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified in support of the FBI on Tuesday, arguing that default device encryption “severely harms” criminal prosecutions at the state level, including in cases in his district involving at least 175 iPhones.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards and Julia Harte; Editing by Bill Rigby and Grant McCool)

Apple calls FBI iPhone request ‘unprecedented’ in court filing

(Reuters) – Apple Inc on Thursday struck back in court against a U.S. government request to unlock an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, arguing such a move would violate its free speech rights and require the company to devote significant resources to comply.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking Apple’s help to access shooter Rizwan Farook’s iPhone by disabling some of its passcode protections.

Apple argued in its brief that software was a form of protected speech, and thus the Justice Department’s demand violated the constitution.

“The government’s request here creates an unprecedented burden on Apple and violates Apple’s First Amendment rights against compelled speech,” it said.

Apple also argued that the court was over-stepping its jurisdiction, noting that Congress had rejected legislation that would have required companies to do the things the government is asking Apple to do in this case.

Apple said the court order, if upheld, could leave individuals and business vulnerable to an unlimited array of government directives.

“Under the same legal theories advocated by the government here, the government could argue that it should be permitted to force citizens to do all manner of things ‘necessary’ to assist it in enforcing the laws,” Apple said. It gave examples, “like compelling a pharmaceutical company against its will to produce drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection in furtherance of a lawfully issued death warrant or requiring a journalist to plant a false story in order to help lure out a fugitive.”

Apple’s resistance has intensified a national debate about whether the government should have technological access, or a “back door” to get into privately owned phones. The Justice Department has argued that Apple has no legal basis to refuse its help.

Some of the largest tech companies appear to be lining up behind Apple. Google and Facebook will both file briefs supporting the iPhone maker, said several sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Microsoft will file a friend-of the-court brief as well, company President Brad Smith said in congressional testimony Thursday. Twitter also said it will sign a brief in support of Apple.

Apple laid out in its brief the resources it believes would be necessary to comply with the government’s request, saying it would likely require a team of up to 10 Apple engineers and employees for as long as four weeks.

Complying with the request would also likely lead to “hundreds” of more demands from law enforcement, Apple said.

“Responding to these demands would effectively require Apple to create full-time positions in a new ‘hacking’ department to service government requests,” the company said in the filing.

“Apple would need to hire people whose sole function would be to assist with processing and effectuating such orders,” wrote Lisa Olle, an Apple lawyer and manager of privacy and law enforcement compliance. “These people would have no other necessary business or operations function at Apple” and would be charged with crafting what Apple referred to as “GovtOS.”

Government officials have rejected that characterization and earlier on Thursday, FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel that court approval of the FBI’s request was “unlikely to be a trailblazer” in other cases.

While the case “will be instructive for other courts,” larger policy questions about reasonable law enforcement access to encrypted data will likely need to be resolved by Congress and others, Comey said.

Shares of Apple were barely changed and closed up less than 1 percent at $96.76.

Apple also raised the specter of courts ordering it to help in other cases in other ways, such as writing computer code that would turn on an iPhone microphone to help surveillance.

The company also criticized the Justice Department for publicizing the order, which would normally have been filed under seal.

“This is the only case in counsel’s memory in which an FBI Director has blogged in real-time about pending litigation, suggesting that the government does not believe the data on the phone will yield critical evidence about other suspects,” the company said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview on Wednesday with ABC News that the company was prepared to take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary.

(Reporting by Dan Levine, Joseph Menn and Julia Love in San Francisco and Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Bill Rigby and Richard Chang)

U.S. training African police to counter new jihadist threats

THIES, Senegal (Reuters) – Ahead of a drill to teach West African police about forensics by blowing up a car filled with crash test dummies posing as suicide bombers, FBI agents met an unexpected question: why bother to investigate if the militants are already dead?

The query from a Senegalese officer demonstrates the steep learning curve for the region’s security forces if they are to keep pace with increasingly brazen and sophisticated jihadists moving in from the north-central Sahara and possibly Libya.

Since Islamic State’s entry into Libya last year, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has responded with a series of attacks to bolster its claim of primacy in the western Sahara.

Western governments worry the Islamic State presence in Africa may lead to ties with West Africa’s Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the group last year, and could herald a drive south. Some al Qaeda-linked brigades also appear to be merging.

Reflecting the changing threat and after major attacks in the last four months in Mali and Burkina Faso in which at least 50 people, including many Westerners, were killed, this year’s annual “Flintlock” counter-terrorism exercises have included police training for the first time.

Recent West African efforts have revealed blunders, security sources say.

So many people touched an assault rifle used by militants in the Bamako attack, for example, that it was impossible to take fingerprints.

In January, an AQIM death row fugitive who fled Mauritania via Senegal was able to travel 300 miles before being stopped in Guinea, acquiring arms and accomplices on the way, thanks in part to bungled communication between Senegalese and Mauritanian officials, a Senegalese security source said.

U.S. experts say three main shortfalls need to be addressed: intelligence, cross-border cooperation and reaction times.

“In most African countries the capacity to respond to these sorts of incidents is middle-of-the-road at best,” said a senior U.S. military officer, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his remarks.

“But they are very eager to learn.”

NEW TECHNIQUES

Security experts report a growing sophistication since last year in the tactics and weaponry used by AQIM and associated groups, which they say may be born of competition with Islamic State.

An armored suicide truck, albeit a makeshift one, was used in an attack on a U.N. base in Kidal in northern Mali that killed seven peacekeepers this month.

Boko Haram suicide vests now often include hidden cell phones so they can be remotely detonated and increasingly resemble those used in the Middle East, weapons experts say.

Until last year, desert militants, aiming by moonlight, had fired rockets from far away and mostly missed their targets.

As the threat grows, there are signs the U.S. is increasing its commitments.

Already, there are up to 1,200 special operations forces on the continent, providing training, operating drones and, very rarely, intervening directly such as in the Ouagadougou siege.

Last week, the U.S. launched its second set of air strikes in Libya in three months in what risk management consultancy Signal Risk’s director Ryan Cummings called a “point of departure” from a strategy previously characterized by a limited appetite for offensive roles in Africa.

Washington is proposing $200 million in new military spending for North and West Africa. Both the United States and France, which has 3,500 troops in the region, intend to boost support to regional security body Group of Five Sahel, diplomats and officials say.

Three sources familiar with the agreement told Reuters that the United States and Senegal had agreed a new accord granting rights to establish a base here in case of an emergency.

Intelligence sharing among the different countries of West Africa will be key, security officials said.

The United States plans to set up the first of many “intelligence fusion” centers at the headquarters for a regional anti-Boko Haram task force in Chad to allow countries to share sensitive information in a secure environment.

“If we continue to invest in the development of regional platforms, it will pay huge dividends over the next year, but it cannot be done without a comprehensive approach,” said Commander for Special Operations Command Africa Brigadier General Donald Bolduc.

Overcoming suspicions between neighbors and historic rivals will be a challenge, however.

“The sharing of intelligence between neighbors is not where it should be and this is critically important,” said a Western intelligence source at Flintlock.

(Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. ramps up Apple fight with new filing in iPhone unlocking case

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to compel Apple Inc to comply with a judge’s order for the company to unlock the encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, portraying the tech giant’s refusal as a “marketing strategy.”

The filing escalated a showdown between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley over security and privacy that ignited earlier this week.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking the tech giant’s help to access the shooter’s phone by disabling some of its passcode protections. The company so far has pushed back, and on Thursday won three extra days to respond to the order.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The motion to compel Apple to comply did not carry specific penalties for the company, and the Justice Department declined to comment on what recourse it was willing to seek. In the order, prosecutors acknowledged that the filing “is not legally necessary.”

But the Justice Department said the motion was in response to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s public statement Wednesday, which included a refusal to “hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers.”

The clash between Apple and the Justice Department has driven straight to the heart of a long-running debate over how much law enforcement and intelligence officials should be able to monitor digital communications.

A federal court hearing in California has been scheduled for March 22 in the case, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

“Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack … Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order,” prosecutors wrote in the Friday order.

“Apple’s current refusal to comply with the court’s order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” prosecutors said.

The two sides have been on a collision course since Apple and Google began offering default end-to-end encryption on their devices in 2014, a move prompted in part by the surveillance revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

But the Justice Department struggled to find a compelling case where encryption proved to be an insurmountable hurdle for its investigators until the Dec. 2 shooting rampage by Rizwan Farook and his wife in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14. Authorities believe the couple was inspired by the Islamic State.

Some technology experts and privacy advocates backing Apple suggest Farook’s work phone likely contains little data of value. They have accused the Justice Department of choreographing the case to achieve a broader goal of gaining support for legislation or a legal precedent that would force companies to crack their encryption for investigators.

The case has quickly become a topic in the U.S. presidential race. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday called for a “boycott” against Apple until the company complied with the court order.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards, Dustin Volz and Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Andrew Hay and Bill Rigby)

Apple opposes order to help unlock California shooter’s phone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Apple Inc opposed a court ruling on Tuesday that ordered it to help the FBI break into an iPhone recovered from a San Bernardino shooter, heightening a dispute between tech companies and law enforcement over the limits of encryption.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said the court’s demand threatened the security of Apple’s customers and had “implications far beyond the legal case at hand.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said that Apple must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook.

That assistance includes disabling the phone’s auto-erase function, which activates after 10 consecutive unsuccessful passcode attempts, and helping investigators to submit passcode guesses electronically.

Federal prosecutors requested the court order to compel Apple to assist the investigation into the Dec. 2 shooting rampage by Farook and his wife, killing 14 and injuring 22 others. The two were killed in a shootout with police.

The FBI has been investigating the couple’s potential communications with Islamic State and other militant groups.

“Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily,” prosecutors said.

U.S. government officials have warned that the expanded use of strong encryption is hindering national security and criminal investigations.

Technology experts and privacy advocates counter that forcing U.S. companies to weaken their encryption would make private data vulnerable to hackers, undermine the security of the Internet and give a competitive advantage to companies in other countries.

In a letter to customers posted on Apple’s website, Cook said the FBI wanted the company “to build a backdoor to the iPhone” by making a new version of the iPhone operating system that would circumvent several security features.

“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers – including tens of millions of American citizens – from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals,” Cook said.

He said Apple was “challenging the FBI’s demands” and that it would be “in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.”

In a similar case last year, Apple told a federal judge in New York that it was “impossible” for the company to unlock its devices that run an operating system of iOS 8 or higher.

According to prosecutors, the phone belonging to Farook ran on iOS 9.

Prosecutors said Apple could still help investigators by disabling “non-encrypted barriers that Apple has coded into its operating system.”

Apple and Google both adopted strong default encryption in late 2014, amid growing digital privacy concerns spurred in part by the leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski said on Tuesday that Apple might have to write custom code to comply with the order, presenting a novel question to the court about whether the government could order a private company to hack its own device.

Zdziarski said that, because the San Bernardino shooting was being investigated as a terrorism case, investigators would be able to work with the NSA and the CIA on cracking the phone.

Those U.S. intelligence agencies could likely break the iPhone’s encryption without Apple’s involvement, he said.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Additional reporting by Joseph Menn, Dan Levine and Shivam Srivastava; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Lisa Shumaker and Robin Paxton)

Four injured in Ohio machete attack, police kill suspect

(Reuters) – Police shot and killed a machete-wielding man who injured four people at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, police said on Friday.

Police identified the suspect in the Thursday night attack as 30-year-old Mohamed Barry. The four victims were a 54-year-old man who remained in critical condition and three 43-year-olds – three men and one woman – all of whom had injuries that were not life-threatening.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting Columbus police in the investigation, said Supervisory Special Agent Rick Smith of FBI’s Cincinnati division.

The owner of the Nazareth Restaurant & Deli told the Columbus Dispatch newspaper he believed his business was targeted because of his Israeli descent.

“Obviously we were targeted because there’s a whole bunch of businesses around here,” Hany Baransi, who is from Israel, was reported as saying, “I’m the only foreigner.”

Columbus and federal officials are investigating the assault, police-involved shooting, suspect and possible motives, Kim Jacobs, Columbus police chief, told reporters on Friday.

Police said the officer who shot the suspect was John Johnson, a 25-year veteran assigned to the patrol bureau.

The suspect had walked into the restaurant and argued with an employee before leaving, returning with the machete a short time later and attacking customers, according to police.

Barry fled and police caught up with him about four miles away as he exited a vehicle armed with a machete and a knife, police said in a statement.

Officers first used a Taser and were unsuccessful in trying to subdue Barry and then shot him multiple times when he lunged at an officer, police said.

Restaurant staff and customers did not recognize the man, Columbus police spokesman Sergeant Rich Weiner said.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing in Bill Trott and Steve Orlofsky)